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Friday, April 18, 2008

Y again

It struck me last night that I could do more with the letter "Y" than a poem...as in:

Y is it whenever I am on the phone, on the computer or sitting down anywhere in the house, including in the bathroom, the baby's radar immediately locates me and she comes squalling to be picked up and held?

Y is it that whenever I have laundered my chore clothes we get a new calf that same day and I have to train her to bottlefeed and she spews milk all over my clean clothes?

Y is it the computer always crashes when I am trying to comment on a blog, when I have just finished a long email, or when I am trying to post in my own blog?

Y is it when I forget to change out of my good pants and I go to the milk barn that a cow lets loose with a major flying pie and gets me?

Those are just some of the "Y" in life I have.

In other news:

Apparently I didn't scare the wrens away from the gourd; I saw one going in it yesterday with a beakful of nesting materials. Husband says they aren't easy to scare away. He has tried to chase them away from nesting sites before, but with little luck except to totally block the area. He has had them build nests in the garage, in his little tool cubby holes. Once they built a nest in a papersack full of roofing nails, he came in and saw nails scattered on the floor underneath. I hope they raise a family in the gourd.

We have yet another young heifer (about 1 year old) getting puny on us. Husband says he doesn't know what else to do; they have all been treated and wormed and are getting the best feed and hay we have. (I cart the feed to them, I KNOW they aren't getting stinted!) We were going to sell some of them this spring, but now hubby says if they all die on us we will just wait for them to die instead and save gas in carting them to the auction; maybe we'll come out ahead in the end. *sigh*

It's fertilizing time. Meaning that the fields get fertilized for good grass; both beef and dairy operations do this. But the price of fertilizer has skyrocketed. Last year it was about $250 p/ ton, this year it's up to $600 per ton. When you need several tons to do your acreage, it's not funny. Our feed truck driver is selling pelleted chicken manure ($250 p/ ton I believe), which is, I guess, what many people are going to use this year instead of regular fertilizer, but husband isn't too convinced of its efficacy. Who knows what the process of pelleting does to the content of the manure, it might lose its power to fertilize.

GG-well, that's kind of my question as well. However I think the process of liquifying and spreading the manure rather offsets the benefit...if that makes any sense. People do DO this and sometimes husband DOES do this, but here's the catch; you have to let it get rained on extensively and wash it all into the ground before you can graze cows on the field again. After all; who wants to eat food that's been coated in poop? We don't really have enough pasturage to do this on a constant basis; though with the prices rising it may come to it in the end.